ROSEVILLE, Mich. – A former Hooters waitress who says she was told by management she was too heavy to work has sued the restaurant.
Cassandra Smith says Hooters violated Michigan law when it placed her on 30-day weight probation earlier this month. She resigned as a result.

Smith’s lawsuit, filed Monday in Macomb County Circuit Court, says she received good reviews while working at the Roseville restaurant. But on May 14, she says she was told to lose weight to improve her looks.

Smith says she weighs 132 pounds, 13 pounds less than when she was recruited in 2008.

The lawsuit is apparently based on a Michigan law that prohibits discrimination iscrimination on the basis of religion, marital status, race, age, height and weight. (Which leads me to wonder if a 6′ 1′ 300lb guy could force a local race track to hire him as a jockey, but I digress).

Leave aside the issue of racial and gender discrimination, which have unique historical issues behind them, what possible right does the state have to tell Hooters that it can’t impose a “looks” requirement for it’s waitresses ? It may be crude, it may be classless, but why shouldn’t they have a right to make that decision ?

Could this “uniform test” also work in reverse whereby if one of the women lost too much weight and did not fill out her uniform sufficiently that she had to go on a regime of eating to fill out said uniform more fully?